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In an award-winning journalism career spanning nearly three decades, Glenn Kessler has covered foreign policy, economic policy, the White House, Congress, politics, airline safety and Wall Street. He was The Washington Post's chief State Department reporter for nine years, traveling around the world with three different Secretaries of State. Before that, he covered tax and budget policy for The Washington Post and also served as the newspaper's national business editor. More »

Most Revealing Fibs: John Edwards

By
Michael Dobbs

Campaigning in New Hampshire, Dec. 7, 2007.

"America's trade policy has been a complete disaster...We got something America did not need, which is NAFTA, which has cost us millions of jobs."--John Edwards, Democratic Debate on CNN, Nov. 15, 2007.

John Edwards has embraced economic populism as the central plank of his electoral platorm. In the world according to Edwards, honest, hard-working Americans are for ever being exploited by shadowy lobbying groups and powerful vested interests. It is a black-and-white world in which there is not much room for nuance. The former senator for North Carolina and Democratic vice-presidential candidate sometimes gets so carried away by his rhetoric that he makes mistakes.

Asked for supporting evidence for the "millions" of lost jobs claim, Edwards campaign spokesman Eric Schultz cited a 2006 study by a leading NAFTA sceptic, Robert Scott of the Economic Policy Institute. But Scott's research does not support the "millions" claim. It does not even support the more modest claim (sometimes made by Edwards) of a loss of "one million jobs." The key line from the EPI analysis is as follows: "Growing trade deficits with Mexico and Canada have displaced production that supported roughly 660,000 (manufacturing only) and 1.0 million (total) U.S. jobs since the agreement took effect in 1994."

Note the word "displaced." Only one third of these jobs were "lost" for good, according to Scott. In the remaining cases, workers found other jobs. Scott says that a majority of these new jobs paid less than the original jobs--but that is a separate debate.

The basic problem in this discussion is that proponents of NAFTA talk only in terms of jobs created," said Sandra Polaski, one of the authors of the Carnegie study. "Opponents talk in terms of jobs destroyed. But there are always pluses and minuses with trade."

The Pinocchio Test

It is still too early to rank the candidates in terms of their overall truthfulness. I have handed out Pinocchios to all the candidates for individual statements that seem at variance with the facts, but will give them a pass this week. Send me any other examples of fibs or exaggerations by Edwards.